


i saw the future in a dream last night, there's nothing in it

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Doomed Timeline, F/M, grimdark Rose - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-14
Updated: 2017-06-14
Packaged: 2018-11-14 05:43:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11201652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Dave finds Rose in a remote corner of the veil, a vast laboratory with pipes and spigots and thick ropy wires like veins, and tall green vats that cast refracted light over her supine figure. Rose's skin is gray, her hair gone stark white.  Because she is leaking black sludge from her mouth and because she is his sister, Dave shouldn't find her so beautiful. But he does, matter-of-factly, guilelessly, always, forever, and if the game doesn't kill him then this awful thing surely will.He goes to her.





	i saw the future in a dream last night, there's nothing in it

Dave finds Rose in a remote corner of the veil, a vast laboratory with pipes and spigots and thick ropy wires like veins, and tall green vats that cast refracted light over her supine figure. Rose's skin is gray, her hair gone stark white. When she hears Dave approach, she lifts her body up on one arm and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. It comes away slick and black. Dave swallows the panic pricking the back of his throat and tries not to breathe as the smell of petrichor threatens to overwhelm him. He can't stop himself from stepping forward, though, and falls to his knees just as Rose lurches back onto the ground. Because she is leaking black sludge from her mouth and because she is his sister, Dave shouldn't find her so beautiful. But he does, matter-of-factly, guilelessly, always, forever, and if the game doesn't kill him then this awful thing surely will.

He goes to her.

\--

Rose stops vomiting up gunk eventually, but her skin remains gray. Dave holds her head on his lap and runs his fingers through her hair.

"O'glep sha eld." She says wearily. Dave tucks a strand of hair behind her ear.

"Right on, sis." He replies, and they're both silent for a spell. They make their way onto their backs, with Dave's arm around Rose and her head on his chest. She drools black onto his shirt intermittently but Dave doesn't mind, happy to hold her calm like this and examine the sick elation he feels when her head turns against his breastbone, and when her thick white eyelashes flutter dreamlike against her ashen cheek. He feels like he might love her, even like this, filled up with evil like an apple full of worms. He tilts his head and breathes into her hair. She smells like sick sweet rot, like death.

\--

They've been in the veil for three months, alone. They sent the bodies into space, Kanaya's wrapped in the gauzes and tafettas she liked to sew with, Karkat with his movies, Terezi wrapped in her cape and Dave's arms, until it was time for her to be thrust out of the air lock. Gamzee's still rotting in the ship somewhere, a fact that makes Dave's skin crawl at night. At the same time, neither he nor Rose felt like giving him the rites that the other trolls received, not when he was the one who killed them in the first place.

Both he and Rose tried not to watch as their bodies ruptured and swelled in the vacuum of space, and both he and Rose cried, but not together. At first, they were scared. They took turns sleeping, one huddled under the covers while the other stared blankly into space and waited for something to happen.

That lasted for about a week. After that they remained stoically apart but didn't bother keeping watch, slept all day and steeped themselves in sorrow, made themselves sick with it until they became sick of being sick and decided, tentatively, to live again.

They found that they were not sure how. There wasn't much to do in the veil. It was far-reaching but lonely, desolate, a desert of esoteric scientific instruments and detritus of four lives snuffed out. It hurt to look at, so they didn't, and pushed further and further into the tangled hallways of the veil, until they wouldn't be able to find their way back to where the trolls once lived if they tried.

They didn't try.

\--

Dave now knows more about Rose than he has about anyone. There's nothing to do but talk and no one to talk to but each other, so they do talk. They laugh, and cry, and lay in silence with peripheral parts of their bodies touching.

She tells him about all the times her mother packed her lunches with forks and napkins but no food, the time her mother took her to a carnival and rode with her on all the rides and they were so happy, the time she ate a bee and her whole face swelled up, the times her English tutor put his hand up her skirt while her mom was passed out in the other room.

Dave tells her about the gold fish he bought from the store and how he got mad and killed it on purpose, and how bad he felt, and the old woman who he was friends with in the apartment next to his, and smoking pot in the boy's locker room at school, and how his brother dislocated his shoulder and left him on the roof and Dave, immobilized by pain, writhed on the pavement for an hour before it popped back into place.

She tells him that the horrorterrors are still with her and that they lick at the edges of her brain with a penetrating blackness, and how scared she is. Dave doesn't listen closely enough.

\--

Rose is crying now, and her tears are black, too.

"D'ev." She says. "Dave."

The black tears are eerily cold on Dave's neck as Rose presses her face there, gurgling every so often. She hoists herself onto his chest and looks down at him with somber eyes that are white all the way through. Dave's chest is a bruise with a thumb pressed into it, aching. His mouth feels dry. Their faces are very close together. Her lips are sticky and black, and if he doesn't kiss her now, he doesn't know when else he can, so he does, panicked, desperate, and with infinite tenderness.

She tastes bittersweet, not like chocolate but with a chemical sharpness. She tastes metallic and like sulfur, and after a moment she gurgles more and kisses back hungrily. Her hands grip his shirt for dear life, and her wide eyes leak a thin black liquid like they're bleeding. Dave has never loved her more, to the point where it feels like his heart is a bone that's been fractured, or more to the point a muscle that's being exercised beyond its limits. He makes a small, wounded noise into her mouth, and she laughs.

\--

When Dave opens his eyes, Rose's irises are a faint lavender, filmed over with white but nonetheless present. He hoists himself into a seated position, cradles her on his lap, grinning wildy.

"Jesus Christ, Lalonde, could this get any more clicheed? I'm saving you with the power of my magic lips. I'm a fucking casanova, who knew."

"S'leghorp, Dave shlgef ap pero'trp." She agrees, and loops her arms around his neck. The press of their bodies together is easier than he could have imagined, and the iron of hot human blood is joining the taste of sulfur in her mouth. Dave chases it with his tongue. They moan and sigh together until Rose is brown-skinned and warm again, and a little while after that, because they have no schedule and lots of time, and moreover if they stop kissing they'll have to use their mouths to talk. So Dave laughs and rolls Rose around, avoiding the puddles of dark goo that she's left, until they reach a lull with Dave above Rose and his arms bracketing her head.

The smiles fall off their faces, and they consider each other for a while. "This is twelve kinds of fucked up, you realize. Plus a bonus level of fucked up we unlocked by holding B and pressing select. If we were video game buffs, this would be a dream come true but as it is we're just normie casuals who want a good game of Super Mario to unwind after a long lifetime of one fucked up thing after another. Rose, I--" Rose puts her hand over Dave's mouth.

"Shh. Enough." Dave shuts up. Rose removes her hand and sighs. "Enough, okay. I don't care."

He rests his forehead on hers, keeping his mouth shut. She gives a small, grateful smile, and wraps her arms around Dave's ribs. "This is the first really good thing that's happened in so fucking long, alright. One of us could very easily ruin it simply by thinking too hard, so let's not do any of that and continue to be happy. I was _happy_ just then, Dave, can you believe it?"

"I guess I can. I was, too. Schwild, bro." It's like they're sharing a secret, being happy together like this. So they kiss some more, until their mouths are sore, and then lay together for a while more. Dave feels a deep, sated peacefulness. If his sadness is a living, breathing creature, then moments like this are arrows that break through cartilage and through bone. Dave feels safe, even though he knows that death could reach out and touch him at any moment. That might be what love is, a distraction but a beautiful one. Dave's willing to be distracted until he can't be anymore. He can't ask anything of Rose except to share the same space for a minute or two, but that's all he knows how to want. And so he wants, and distracts, and he and Rose fall asleep in a sweet tangle of limbs, and if they died in their sleep, that'd be okay.

But they don't, and that's okay, too.


End file.
